I’ve had a few people ask me about the power auras that I use for characters other than my druid. I’ve been slowly working through posts of the auras that I’m using for both my warrior and my paladin, and via a very informal poll on Twitter on which set I should post next, the warrior won out. I’m going to go ahead and throw out that I’m a mediocre to decent tank, and I’m certainly no Xav. I play my tank largely for fun, and I’m far from an expert on Warrior tanking. As such, you may find that the minimal auras that I use for Kitai’s tanking are insufficient for your tanking needs – and that’s fine! What I tend to use my auras for are things that I tend to forget, think are important, and want to be reminded to make use of the ability. You may find that you need more, or less, from your auras.

Before we get into the pictures and exports, I want to comment on my style. When I was learning Power Auras, the person that helped me learn the mod had told me that he tends to use icon settings so that he remembers what each setting is for, indicating that when he just used auras and squiggles and what not, he tended to forget what each “aura” indicated. As I went on my Powa journey, I found that this was true for me as well, so all of my settings will mirror icons.

Now, there is no “right” way to do this, so if you prefer “auras” and that works better for you, you should set those up! Everyone will find that something works different for them, and should experiment until they find something they feel comfortable with.

Kitai’s Prot Exports

Before we get into the actual exports, I want to comment on them. Whereas I have about a million exports for Beru – I only use six with Kitai. I find that when I’m tanking there is so much going on, that being flooded with extra information that I don’t need at my fingertips is just distracting and more harmful than helpful. This is quite possibly the result of not being a native tank – and if you tank day in and day out, you may find that you can deal with the extra information. For me, I just want reminders of when key abilities are available, especially if I have a tendency to forget to use them.

I do not have an aura for any of my cooldowns – because 1) I don’t have an issue knowing when I need to use them; and 2) I can tell by a simple sweep at the top of my action bars what is, or is not, available for use. As I use my cooldowns freely when I feel I need them, I’m not concerned about missing them. One thing that I’ve been toying around with doing is creating auras to let me know the status of my cooldowns while they are active , but I have been using RSA which lets me know when my cooldowns have faded, so I’m not sure if the extra graphics are necessary for me.

I also do not have a cooldown for Thunderclap or Shockwave, as they are also not abilities that I have trouble remembering to use regularly – especially when tanking dungeons which are 80% trash that I am generally frantically paranoid about keeping under control! However, should you feel that you need the extra reminders, they are fairly easy to set up 🙂

And now that I’ve talked you to death, how about we move on to the exports!

Commanding Shout/Battle Shout Available – Rage! The most important resource to a warrior. There were a lot of changes in Cataclysm with regards to the normalization of rage, and for me it’s very important to generate rage every chance that I can. After all, more rage will always be more threat! This aura will let you know when either Commanding Shout and Battle Shout are off of cooldown and ready for you to use.

Berserker Rage Available – Similarly to my shouts, I want to make sure that I’m using berserker rage to generate as much rage as possible. This aura will let you know when Berserker Rage is off of cooldown and ready to use.

Demo Shout – One of the things that is important, and I think a lot of newer tanks forget (including myself!), is to keep your mobs debuffed. Not only does it help to generate threat, it also helps your healers out! This aura will show you when Demo Shout is active and how much time is left on the debuff.

Shield Slam Available – If I’m not mistaken, Shield Slam is one of your highest threat generating tools. It’s also something that I don’t use as often as I should (as you will observe in the video below!). This aura will let oyu know when Shield Slam is Available and ready for use.

Sword and Board Proc – This aura isn’t show in the picture above, but can be seen in the video below. It sits in exactly the same place as the Shield Slam Aura. What this aura does is let you know when you have a Sword and Board proc, as well as let you know how much time you have to use the proc.

As I said above – I know that these are very minimal auras. If you spend a great deal of time tanking, you may find that you need and/or want more – and if that’s the case, I strongly encourage you to play around with the auras and add to the few simple auras that I use 🙂

You are also in for a very special treat! I’ve been playing around with video capture in WoW, and made a short bit here of one of the bosses in Heroic Lost City so that you can see the above auras in action. Things that you will likely notice are that I don’t use shield slam nearly as often as I should (and I swear! I thought I was using it on CD!), and I let several S&B procs rot (bad, bad tank!). I was also apparently unaware that you needed to stay out of the yellow pool during the shadow phase of the fight – something that you can see makes my healer fairly displeased with me 😉

I hope that these are helpful! Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of experimenting and finding settings that will work best for you! If you don’t see an Aura that you think would be essential for a tank, let me know! It’s quite possible that I’ve just not through of it. I also imagine that as I tank more this expansion I will add more auras. If you have any questions on what you see here, or how to create exports, please do not hesitate to ask!

This is really cool to see your UI like this. I’ve found powerauras to be amazingly flexible and I just love seeing what other people are doing with it.

You have a lot of really good stuff in there which is similar to what I use it for but I find it interesting to see where you make them appear.

I started experimenting some more too with when something is interruptible, show my shield bash or spell reflect. Monitoring when my rend falls off too.

In raids, I’m trying to use it when my attention is very much needed. On H Halfus, for example, I’m interrupting Halfus but I also need to monitor my stacks to know when to call a tank switch. So I used power auras to put something up at 6 stacks.

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If you intend to use anything on this website, please have the courtesy to attribute what you share, and offer links back to this site. If you are unsure if you can use the content found here, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. ~Beru